


My Compass is You

by mckinlily



Series: These Bonds We Build [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Foster Care, Found Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Space Dad Shiro (Voltron), broganes, except in this space dad is actually a stressed out eighteen year old, pala-siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:15:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26453215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mckinlily/pseuds/mckinlily
Summary: “We’re not in Arizona anymore” was code for they weren’t in the system anymore. No more stupid foster families or the infamous Hell House. They had Shiro—or, rather, Shiro had them—and for just once in their lives, it seemed like things could be going right.It was just, after fifteen years of hard experience, Keith wasn’t sure he could trust it.It's the paladin's first day in Boston. Boston is supposed to be a bright new start, but Keith isn't sure how he feels about it. Luckily, Shiro is there to help out.
Relationships: Keith & Shiro (Voltron)
Series: These Bonds We Build [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1882813
Comments: 6
Kudos: 60





	My Compass is You

The air was wet.

Keith stood on the rusted balcony, rubbing his hands over his arms and trying to comprehend how _air_ was _wet._

“What’cha doing?”

Pidge appeared at his elbow and poked him in the side. Keith used to be ticklish there, but after spending enough time around Pidge and Lance he’d become immune.

Instead he frowned. “Why is the air _wet_?”

“Humidity,” said Pidge. “We’re in Boston. The ocean is like right there.”

Keith wrinkled his nose. Somehow, when they’d talked about moving to Boston, he hadn’t thought the ocean meant _this._

“It’s…sticky,” said Keith, trying to put words to the strange sensation of being able to _feel_ the air.

“Yeah. My hair’s getting all puffy. Also I haven’t stopped sweating. Look.”

“Ew, Pidge!” squawked Keith as Pidge lifted her arm trying to show him her pits. “Get that out of my face!”

“Look at it, Keith!”

“I see it! I don’t need to smell it too!”

“But I’m sweating _so much!_ ”

“It’s summer, and there isn’t air conditioning! I don’t need your sweat, too!”

Pidge huffed but put her arm down. “Who even builds an apartment without air conditioning?” she grumbled.

“Idiots,” huffed Keith. Shiro said it was probably because Boston didn’t get as hot as Arizona, but after experiencing the oppressive _thereness_ of the air here, Keith thought that was a stupid excuse.

(Other apartments—nicer apartments for people with money—probably _did_ have air conditioning. But they didn’t mention that.)

Hunk poked his head out of the sliding glass door that less “slid” that resisted any type of movement inflicted upon it. Still, Hunk made a valiant effort.

“Oh hey, guys. Did you find anything interesting?”

“I’m _sweating_ ,” said Pidge, trying to show Hunk her pits.

Keith dodged away from her and pointed across the balcony. “There’s a path down if you jump to the fire escape,” he offered. “And it would be pretty easy to climb down if we had some rope.” Keith squinted down, judging the distance. “It would probably take more than two bedsheets, though.”

“Uh…not what I meant,” said Hunk. “And you do know we don’t need to keep plotting escape routes, right?”

“Because _that’s_ never come back to bite us,” said Pidge sarcastically.

Hunk brought his hands together. “Shiro has custody of us now. _And_ his name is on the lease. We’re not in Arizona anymore.”

Keith’s shoulders tensed up, and he tried not to let it show on his face. He knew what Hunk meant. “We’re not in Arizona anymore” was code for they weren’t in the _system_ anymore. No more stupid foster families or the infamous Hell House. They had Shiro—or, rather, Shiro had them—and for just once in their lives, it seemed like things could be going _right_.

It was just, after fifteen years of hard experience, Keith wasn’t sure he could trust it.

Inside the apartment, the door banged open with a loud cry, “YOOOOOOO! I’M HOME! DID YA MISS ME?”

Keith winced against the incoming headache. “Does he have to yell?” he groused.

Unfortunately, Lance had the hearing of a bat and suck his head out over Hunk’s shoulder. “Do you have to be such a sourpuss Debby-downer? No? I didn’t think so!”

“I’m NOT—!”

“There you go again! ‘No, no, no,’ that’s all you know how to say—”

“At least I CAN say, ‘no’ unlike—”

“Guys!” Shiro had joined crowd at the door, arms full of groceries. “Can we _not_?” he asked.

“Keith started it.”

Keith spluttered with indignation. “I did NOT!”

“ _GUYS!_ ”

Shiro’s voice cut through their bickering. He handed the groceries over to Hunk and drew himself to his full height. Keith was suddenly aware that Shiro wasn’t just their dorky older brother; he was eighteen now. Their _guardian._

There was a moment where judging by everyone else’s reactions, they were aware of the same thing. Officially, Shiro had only finished getting custody of all of them barely a week ago—at which point they’d squashed everything they owned into Shiro’s beat up Toyoda Corolla and gotten the hell out of Arizona.

Keith was so, _so_ grateful to have Shiro around again. But now Shiro was an adult and _legally_ in charge of them, and neither Keith nor anyone else seemed to know exactly what that mean.

Shiro pinched the bridge of his nose. “Look,” he said. “I _know_ you two aren’t actually mad at each other. But I don’t want to get evicted on our first day here, and we _really_ don’t want the police called on us, so if you’re going to bicker, could you at least not do it with the door open on our balcony?”

Shiro ended with a look of long-suffering exasperation that was deeply familiar. It was the same one as when he was ten, and Hunk, Pidge, and Lance had used everything on his bed—from his pillow to his mattress—to build an elaborate blanket fort. Shiro’s dramatic exasperation then had been hilarious.

Or…it had been until Zarkon found out. Shiro had taken the fall for them then, but after that blanket forts were only allowed if they could be rapidly deconstructed and hidden.

But now there was no Zarkon, only Shiro, and Shiro wasn’t even mad. He just gestured with his chin. “Come inside and help with the groceries, okay? We picked up the basics while we were out.”

“Does that mean mac and cheese?” said Keith, slowly relaxing.

“Uh…yeah,” admitted Shiro with a sheepish shrug. “But there’s other stuff too. I didn’t grab a lot because, well…”

Because they didn’t have a lot of money went unspoken.

“Uh,” said Hunk as they made their way into the apartment. “Not to be a critic or anything, but don’t we not have a pot or even a saucepan yet?”

Shiro stopped, a tiny frown appearing on his forehead. “Oh. No, we don’t. Sorry. I forgot about that.”

His shoulders sagged, and Keith was filled with a sudden rush of emotion. It was _wrong_ , and he needed to—to—

“We have a frying pan,” said Pidge. “Why can’t we use that?”

“Yeah, why not?” demanded Keith, accidentally coming off more aggressive than he meant.

“No offense, but when you two agree on something about cooking that normally means it’s a bad idea,” said Hunk.

“BORING,” sang Lance. “That is NOT the issue here!”

“Then what _is_?” demanded Keith.

Lance shot him a wide, terrifying smile. “Um, hello? We’ve finally got a place of our own, and look at it!” He flung his arms out, encompassing the empty living room and nearly touching either wall. “Totally bare! The walls are all ‘bleh’!”

Even Keith had to admit the dingy white paint was unappealing. “So?”

“ _Soooo_ … If we’re going to live here, we’re going to need to spruce things up! Make the place our own. I’m thinking like paint the walls blue—”

“Not if we want our security deposit back,” sighed Shiro.

“Okay, then we could do posters!” said Lance, redirecting at the drop of a hat. “Like Star Wars or Super Smash for Pidge—”

“Lance…” began Shiro.

But Pidge steamrolled right over him. “We could get a gaming system!” she said excitedly. “And we could leave it the way we like because there’s no one to tell us to put it away!”

“Oh, we could custom design the whole thing,” said Hunk, his eyes lighting up.

“Banana chairs!” cried Lance. “You know, those gaming chairs that like rock back and forth? Or bean bags! Dude, we could have—”

None of them seemed to notice the way Shiro's shoulders drooped or how he left the conversation.

No one but Keith.

Lance was right about one thing: the apartment was bare. The only furniture they had was a queen-sized blow-up mattress that they’d thrown in the bigger of the two bedrooms that Pidge was going to share with Lance and Hunk. Keith loved his siblings, but he was privately relieved that none of them fought him to room with Shiro. They were _loud_ , both in words and action, and sometimes it just got to be too much.

But Shiro could normally be trusted to be a beacon of calm. The room they were planning on sharing was empty except for the threadbare duffle bag that held all of Keith’s earthly possessions and Shiro’s duct-taped backpack. And Shiro himself who was curled up on the floor in the far corner, his face drawn in an unhappy line while he worked poked at something on his phone.

As much as it was weird to think of Shiro as an adult, it was even more disconcerting to remember he was really only three years older than the rest of them. Hunched up in the corner with his bangs falling into his face, Shiro didn’t look so much like Keith’s hero older brother and more like any kid Keith might find at high school. The thought twisted something in Keith’s stomach.

“Hey.”

Keith stood awkwardly from the middle of the room, unsure of where to go from there.

Shiro glanced up through his bangs. “Oh. Hey.” He offered almost a smile and turned back to working on his phone.

Keith took that as permission enough. He slid down the wall to sit next to Shiro and glimpsed what Shiro was looking at: free furniture listings on Craigslist. The twisted feeling in his gut deepened.

“They don’t always think about what they say.”

“I know. It’s fine,” said Shiro in a tone that Keith didn’t believe anymore.

Keith knocked his head back against the wall, exhaling in a huff. “Lance gets these _ideas_ , and he gets totally disconnected from reality. He lets his imagination run away with him and he doesn’t _think—_ ”

“There’s nothing wrong with Lance dreaming,” said Shiro.

“But—!”

“ _Keith_.” Shiro finally turned to look at him, his expression serious. “I never want Lance to stop dreaming big. I never want any of you to stop hoping for the things you want. It’s fine.”

Except it _wasn’t_ because Shiro was here, alone, looking at what they could _actually_ afford while Lance, Pidge, and Hunk were in the other room dreaming up these big ideas that were never going to happen. They were going to be disappointed when they found out, and Shiro was going to have to be the one to tell them, and why did they _do_ that?

“It’s fine, Keith, really. Don’t worry about me.”

Funny enough, that didn’t stop Keith from worrying. Maybe he could if Shiro actually seemed okay, but Shiro was wearing that carefully not-upset expression that he’d been clinging to more and more lately. The one that fooled adults and everyone else who wanted to pick him to pieces, but to Keith looked more like a shoddily constructed mask.

Something had happened, between when the authorities had _finally_ decided to care about what went on in the Hell House and then threw them to the four winds in different foster homes and when they were able to find each again. Shiro was different now, closed off and quiet in a way he hadn’t been before. At least, not with them. He was still Shiro, their older brother who looked out for them and believed in them when no one else would, but there was a wall there that hadn’t been before.

It left Keith feeling small and helpless. When his dad died, a younger Shiro had been the first person to melt through his anger and grief. Keith hated that even nine years later, he still didn’t know how to return it.

“Hey.” Shiro flicked Keith on the side of his head. “You’re stewing. Stop it.”

Keith huffed and shook his bangs out of his face.

Shiro set his phone on the floor and turned a little more towards Keith. “You doing okay? You’ve seemed tense.”

Keith scowled, annoyed that Shiro was turning the tables on him. “I’m _fine_.”

Shiro considered him, seemingly unconvinced. In fairness to Shiro, Keith had said the same thing to him with two black eyes and a profusely bleeding lip, but _Keith_ wasn’t the one deflecting here. Or, at least, he hadn’t started it.

Unfortunately, before Keith could figure out how to put that into words, Shiro cupped the back of his head and rubbed his thumb over his hair. The sensation was soothing even when Keith decidedly did not want to be soothed.

“The emotions finally catching up with you?”

“I— _what?_ ” spluttered Keith.

Shiro just smiled and kept rubbing his hair. “You’ve been quiet. The others were all nervous about moving, but you didn’t seem like it. Is it catching up to you now?”

“ _No_ ,” said Keith automatically, pulling his knees against his chest. He wished Shiro would take his hand off his head, but he couldn’t seem to get himself to shake it off either.

“It’s fine if you are, you know,” said Shiro.

Keith scowled against his knees. “I’m _not_. We’re not in Arizona anymore, and there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Mmhm,” said Shiro. He didn’t say anything else, just slid his hand down to the base of Keith’s neck.

“We’re going to be _fine_ ,” Keith repeated.

“We are,” said Shiro. “I won’t leave you guys again.”

Keith jerked his head up. “You didn’t leave us! It was those assholes who separated—”

But Shiro shook his head. “I should have looked for you. I left you to deal with the system on your own, and I didn’t even start looking until _you_ found me first.”

Keith hunched his shoulders. He didn’t like thinking of the foster home before he found Shiro again. He didn’t like remembering how scary it had been, having a grown man bearing down on him and knowing this time his big brother wouldn’t swoop in to save him.

“I wouldn’t leave you again,” Shiro promised. “Whatever it takes. I won’t let them take you guys away from me.” He squeezed Keith’s shoulders. “I _won’t_.”

And strangely enough, Keith believed him. Shiro had said he’d get them out of the Hell House, and he had. He’d said he’d get custody of them once he turned eighteen, and he did. He was here, living and breathing and with that tone in his voice that hadn’t failed Keith yet. It finally sunk in that they weren’t just on the run, hiding from the authorities. Shiro had actually, _legally_ gotten custody of them.

Keith wasn’t in the system anymore.

“There you go. It’s okay, kiddo,” said Shiro, rubbing his back.

Keith kind of hated that Shiro knew what he was feeling better than he did. But the relief he felt at knowing he had his big brother back—and to _stay_ —was enough to push the irritation down.

Keith looked at Shiro. “You know we don’t need all that fancy stuff Lance was talking about, right? We’ve survived on less.”

“We’ve also survived a crazy scientist experimenting on us, so that might not be the best standard.”

Shiro picked up his phone again and spun it in his hand—his prosthetic hand. The one still filled Keith with guilt every time he thought of it.

“I just…” Shiro spun his cracked, outdated phone, staring out at their empty room. “I don’t want you guys to think all you’re worth to me is the bare minimum.”

It was on the tip of Keith’s tongue to mention Shiro’s hand. It should have been Keith with the prosthetic. If Keith had just been _braver_ , but he’d gotten scared and Shiro had stepped in to convince Honvera to perform the procedure on him instead. And despite that fact that it wasn’t fair, that Shiro had already gone through so _many_ surgeries for them, Keith was secretly, desperately _glad_ it had been Shiro instead of him.

“You showed us the budget,” said Keith instead. “You aren’t like those parents who refuse to spend a cent more than the government paid them. We know you aren’t holding back on us.”

“I can’t give you everything you want though, though,” said Shiro.

“ _So?_ ” said Keith. “The Zarkons were filthy rich, and look where that got them! I’ve been happier with you even that one time we had to sleep under a bridge. We all have. Money isn’t everything, and even Lance knows that.”

Slowly, Shiro smiled. “Since when did you get so wise?”

“It’s not wise,” argued Keith. “It’s common sense.”

Shiro snorted. “Whatever you say, kiddo.” He went to ruffle Keith’s hair, and Keith immediately fought him off.

(Or tried to, anyway. Shiro was stupidly agile, and Keith’s hair ended up thoroughly ruffled anyway.)

Keith scooted a few inches away, as if that would stop Shiro if he was really determined, and looked out across their room. As much as it was small and dirty and dingy, it was _theirs,_ and for once there wasn’t anyone else to take that away.

“Do you really think Boston will be better?” Keith asked Shiro.

“I don’t know,” Shiro admitted. “It’ll be different for sure. But we’re together now. I figure whatever else we can handle.”

That…Yeah. If his family was around, Keith could work with that.

“Okay.” He nodded sharply. “We’ll take down whoever comes for us.”

“ _Or_ … we could handle it like mature, well-adjusted human beings,” said Shiro.

“Yeah,” agreed Keith. “We’ll take them down.”

Shiro groaned. “You’ve been spending too much time with Pidge again. You two are scarily similar.”

“Nah,” said Keith. “Pidge actually, like, plans and stuff. I just punch things.”

Shiro burst out laughing. It was rare enough these days, but achingly familiar as Shiro ruffled Keith’s hair, still chuckling. “At least you’re self-aware.”

“I have one job,” said Keith, quoting Lance. Or, at least, it was close enough to something Lance had said to him at some point. Keith didn’t remember the exact words.

But it made Shiro laugh again, and that was the goal.

Keith had his big brother back, and it was like Shiro had said: as long as they were together, they could handle anything.

They were family, after all.

(And they had Shiro who was basically a human superhero. They were going to be just fine.)

**Author's Note:**

> So we're started building a backstory for this universe. If you liked this, let me know with kudos or in the comments! Or you can come bug my on my [ tumblr](https://mckinlily.tumblr.com) since that's a thing I have now :D


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